Late next Friday Nite-2AM EST- TCM will broadcast, uncut I understand, the classic 1970 supernatural thriller "BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW" starring Patrick Wymark and Linda Hayden. The film was directed by Piers Haggard (the great great grandson of writer H. Rider Haggard). The transfer is 1:85 and I understand some picture info was cropped but this is a chance to see one of the best supernatural thrillers ever made.

Have you already seen "Escape From New York," "The Road Warrior," "28 Days Later," and "Resident Evil?"

If so, then run, don't walk, from this bizarre derivative rehash/ripoff of the above.

A more detailed review is available in the blog at my website.

I give "Doomsday" TWO-AND-ONE-HALF out of five cans of diet cherry vanilla Dr. Pepper.

Nuff said.

Mike out

I have the distict pleasure of serving in a grand jury capacity next month. I was wondering in the last few days on how Jack would handle it. I mean if one of his fake ID'S got called to serve. I think that would be a funny thing of Jack being forced in a way to serve and be so close to one of the things he would hate. he wouldn't be able to just ignore it or get out of it either. There are no little boxes to check to be discluded like the regular jury petit jury notices. I'm pretty sure Abe would be laughing everytime they meet. It would be an intresting short story or a bit of of a reocurring piece to a novel. It can be called Citizen Jack. I'm sure even Gia would needle him-------Mark

I was listening to NPR this morning and they did a story about HarperCollins giving away their books on their website. On their website you can read 5 books they have available in their entirety and they're tracking has shown them people read somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 pages before many of them go on to buy the whole book. Harlequin has offered their entire catalog on-line since 1999 without worrying about illegal file-sharing because readers tend to be older and it takes much longer to read a book than listen to a song. One author on Harlequin (forget her name) said the publisher gave away 1000 copies of her book and sold an additional 3000. What they're all trying to figure out is the magic number to give away that won't be too much and will create the maximum amount of sales.

Better hurry! I recommend Buy it Now if you are fast enough!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie...0227406908

I loved A-Team when I was a kid. The undigested child in me gave a kick to my belly once I heard it was being made into a movie. That is... until I read that John Singleton is making it.

Anybody else got one of these?

Considering his dark looks and thick eyebrows I kinda thought he already looked wolfman-ish and wouldn't need too much makeup, but this... this was jawdropping.

I mentioned this film yesterday in the Ryan Reynolds thread because it showcases his ability to play multiple roles-the movie is a drama told in three parts-but thought it should have its own thread in case anyone doesn't read the other thread. First it is excellent; it is one of the more original movies I've seen in awhile and the cast is uniformly superb. Second, it raises a lot of questions but doesn't forcefeed us answers; it is a non-preachy movie about faith. Third is the hilarious short film God from the special features that you should definitely watch. The only problem I had was with the commentary provided by the writer/director John August and Ryan Reynolds-Boring with a capital B; I thought Reynolds would be a bit more lively.

For those looking to see more of Reynolds(ladies) this is a must. He plays three different characters and excels in all three roles. Hope Davis is fantastic(what else is new) and Melissa McCarthy is a real scene-stealer. Elle Fanning is good in a small part and I liked watching her scenes with Reynolds as she would make a great Vicky.

Has anyone seen any of these? I am just curious to get feedback if there are any that would be worth seeing. I love a good horror movie and have not really heard anything about any of these 8.

Anyone?

Last night I had a really odd dream/nightmare. Everything was perfect. TOO perfect. Like Agent Smith said in The Matrix, my mind kept trying to wake up from it. Of course, I'd forgotten most things in my life (more than I'd known actually), but I was in bliss with the one I love while living on land with my favorite relatives, with the cat I always wanted named Gink, and there were many fun things to do, friends there (from Texas, California, etc), and all.

But flipping through some old pix, I felt that I should remember something. And I came to a pic that I somehow missed. People I used to know but had forgotten about in a place I'd forgotten about (and from a metadream state--ie, from the part of me that remembers but did not affect the dream or me in it--from actual memories). And powerful but vague impressions overwhelmed me. I found others and then showed them to others, and they were similarly affected. The memory wasn't perfect, like I pointed to one boy in a pic and said, "His name is..." and instead gave the name of the county that my granny lives in.

Others noted other things, too. Like how hard it was to read and write. (This, btw, is common for me in dreams for some reason.) Though perhaps ironically, my cousin (who really isn't that good at it) was the one to complain the most.

And then somehow we started remembering how we'd stood up to some evil demon that had invaded our world and it imprisoned us. It had hoped to slowly drive us all mad and as we came to realize that "it wasn't real," we'd turn on each other to end the "mockery" of what simply wasn't there. Having been a demon, it hadn't counted on us instead working together instead and finding solace in each other. And as it became aware that the gig was up (though we hadn't yet figured out how to escape), it came (without being seen, only felt and its malevolent will observable) for us. And at that point, I'll close as it got more gory than a Clive Barker story.

The gore was upsetting enough that I woke up. And while drifting between wake and sleep I had a powerful impression that I'd somehow seen this plot before in a movie, or possibly a story. Like where people who thought they knew their lives would look at pix or other things and recall things that shouldn't have happened, but did (because the life they thought they lived was a lie). And then they get into trouble as they start realizing their entire life is a lie and that they're more or less helplessly in thrall to some great evil. Did that happen in Dark City? Or any other movie like that?


Oddly, I meditated to know how our memories got wiped to begin with and I got the impression that "we were simulcrums (or sims, if you prefer)." That is, artificially created beings, made with some part of the ones we imitated, and so had very little in the way of our original memories. But I couldn't get what happened to our original selves. Maybe the world had been destroyed and the demon was simply staving off boredom by making simulcrums and trying to make us kill each other...